1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a convergent communications system for providing services to individual and corporate customers worldwide. More specifically, the invention relates to a convergent communications system that provides mobile commerce, electronic commerce and communication services through existing communication switches without specific hardware located at those switches. This system supports the use of pre-paid and post-paid accounts across heterogeneous networks to provide a large range of advanced communication services regardless of a customer's location.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is known to pay for services ahead of time (pre-paid), as well as establishing a credit account for services (post-paid). A post-paid account is established based on the credit worthiness of a customer, and the corporate entity establishing the post-paid account then vouches for the continued credit worthiness of a customer. Post-paid accounts are well known and widely used.
For example, it is known to establish a post-paid telephone access account. A customer can then make long distance phone calls or access the phone network when roaming in a visiting network, different from a home network, by using the post-paid account. The telephone company then guarantees payment to any other companies providing roaming services based on the customer's credit worthiness. In addition, for several years mobile operators have offered roaming services to their customers. Typically, mobile operators enter into a roaming agreement with partner operators in different geographies, such as other countries, and allow their customers to use their mobile phones in these partner countries or different networks. The home network stands as payment guarantor for the calls made by their customers in visiting networks. Visiting networks provide the facility of making and receiving calls to the home network subscribers and collect, process and forward the usage data to the caller's home network for payment. The home network then pays the visiting network.
At a periodic interval, the home network telephone company bills its customer and collects the money from the customer. Typically, such transactions involve significant time delays, e.g., anywhere between a few days to a few months. Therefore, the home network must stand as payment guarantor to the visiting network for the calls made by its customers. Due to this, currently the home network is able to offer roaming only to its post-paid customers (whose creditworthiness is established). With the increase in the pre-paid subscriber base, teleco operators worldwide want to offer roaming services to their pre-paid customers as well. Today, due to the inherent nature of non-real-time processing of call usage for roaming customers, operators are not in a position to offer true pre-paid roaming to their customers.
Further, it is known to establish a post-paid credit account with a bank or other lending institution, and then use that post-paid account to purchase goods and services. Occasionally, a post-paid credit account and roaming telephone services can be combined, such as when a credit card number is exchanged over a wireless telephone link to order services. There are limitations to this system. For example, customers may wish to limit their financial exposure in an account, or may not wish to establish credit with the telephone company. These customers can establish a pre-paid account. However, existing pre-paid account arrangements have several limitations.
For example, a pre-paid mobile or wireless phone user may want to use his/her wireless phone while in a territory covered by another phone company. As used hereafter, this is referred to as a visiting or roaming territory or network. While the pre-paid customer may have sufficient credit to complete the phone call using other accounts, such as a credit card, the customer has not established “credit” with the phone company of the roaming territory, or even his original phone company (“home network” or “home territory”), by virtue of being a pre-paid customer. Thus, a pre-paid customer in a roaming territory (“a pre-paid roamer”) has no way of having his/her pre-paid home phone company account debited while roaming, unless the roaming network phone company has an agreement with the home network phone company, and has specific hardware at each switch to monitor the call, and debit the customer's pre-paid account. As these agreements are generally impractical to create, there exists no effective pre-paid roaming.
Pre-paid telephony has existed in the telecommunications industry. A customer or user is required to pay a certain amount of money in advance to the communications service provider, and the service provider allows the customer to use the communications services for that pre-paid amount. Once the user account balance reaches zero, the service provider cuts-off the service. The customer then has to recharge his/her account by paying the communications service provider additional funds. The pre-paid account thus needs to be maintained as current.
To enable pre-paid communications services, service providers need to control the actual use of funds in the customer pre-paid account in real time (i.e., as the service is being delivered) and the service provider needs a system that can calculate the use of the account funds as the customer call is progressing in real time. There are several systems available in the marketplace for the service providers that allow for such a real time usage control. Commercially available technologies today enable service providers to control the calls in real time or near real time using several methods.
A first method is a pre-paid platform working as a service node to the telephony-switching network. Calls might flow through the pre-paid platform, or the service node pre-paid platform may control the calls in a semi-intelligent network fashion (i.e., where the platform instructs the switching network to connect/disconnect without calls actually being routed through the system). A pre-paid platform can therefore work as an intelligent network node on the IN (intelligent network) enabled telephony-switching networks.
It is also possible to offer pre-paid services based on processing of Call Data Records (“CDR's”) periodically at very short intervals. Switching systems allow for the usage information to be passed onto the service provider's billing system, for example, through a hot-CDR port where the telephone company switches are configured to supply the usage information to the billing system at frequent intervals. It is also possible to offer pre-paid services based on programming a card to take advantage of Advice of Charge (“AoC”) parameters, which restricts the call usage. However, since using Call Data Records is prone to fraud, mobile operators worldwide are discontinuing their use. Also AoC does not offer flexibility in configuring a rate of use.
Traditional pre-paid systems require the call control equipment, i.e., both the software and hardware, to be co-located with the switch. The pre-paid system is connected with the telecommunication switch over a signaling link (e.g., SS7, MF2RC, or ISDN-PRI, etc). When a caller makes a phone call, the switch routes the signaling information over the signaling link to the pre-paid system. Then the pre-paid system authorizes the call and asks the switch to connect the call. The pre-paid system also initiates a rating process for that call. The rating process keeps track of the usage of the pre-paid account of the caller and when the balance runs out, the system asks the switch to disconnect the call.
Deployment of this type of system for pre-paid roaming is inefficient. For pre-paid roaming, all the participating and often heterogeneous networks need to have the same pre-paid system. This means, that multiple pre-paid call control equipment needs to be deployed for each participating network. This can be a logistic nightmare for several reasons. First, initial deployment of equipment at all participating networks can be time consuming and expensive. Second, regular operations and maintenance (e.g., tariff plan updates, management information system information, etc.) are logistically difficult on a daily basis.
In addition, roaming services require data clearing and settlement of financial transactions. Multiparty settlements across various network systems can be very complex. Customer account set up and management across networks can be very complex and any delay could result in enormous inconsistencies and confusion for customers. Customers could exhaust their pre-paid account balance while in a visiting network. The customer should be able to add money or “recharge” his/her account from a visiting network. Customer recharge from a visiting network poses several issues including: how to allow for a customer account recharge when the customer is not a customer of the visiting network service provider, how to manage the financial transaction related to payment management and settlement of recharge amounts (e.g., issues related to dealer commissions, the recharge service facilitation process and transfer of money between the home network and visiting network, etc.).
If the customer requires some help regarding his/her account, e.g., billing information or additional service, etc., the question arises of whom will he/she contact for customer service. The visiting network may not have all the information related to the customer, and the information at the home network is not necessarily be current. The visiting network may want to offer value-added services like simple messaging service (“SMS”), data services, and call related services (e.g., call conferencing, call waiting, etc.) to the roaming customer (which value-added services are available to the same customer in the home network while he/she is not roaming). An additional problem arises when information between the home network and visiting network needs to be synchronized for a pre-paid roaming customer.
Most telephone companies today have in-house information technology (“IT”) systems for operational and business management. Their current pre-paid systems are integrated with such in-house operational and business management systems. Telephone companies would like to have the same level of integration between their pre-paid roaming system and in-house IT systems so that they can manage their business efficiently. Deployment of several pre-paid roaming systems could mean several integrations. This could be, by itself, time-consuming and expensive.
For a post-paid customer, telephone companies are willing to take the customer payment or financial risk as the home network has already evaluated the creditworthiness of the customer and the home network is willing to underwrite that payment risk. However, in case of a pre-paid customer, the home network may not even know whom the customer is, e.g., it could be an anonymous customer. This means that both the visiting network and home network need to have constant agreements for all types of transactions (e.g., communication services as well as commerce transactions).
Telephone companies also offer customer care to their customers. However, telephone companies offer customer care to their subscribers only when the subscribers are in their home network. If the subscriber is roaming, he can dial into the home network's customer care center and use this facility. Offering customer care beyond the home network service area, however, is difficult due to the fact that customer information is not available at the visiting network. Some telephone company operators are able to provide limited customer care at the visiting networks. However, so far such systems can only accommodate post-paid customers.
With the increase in the pre-paid subscriber base and with growing mobile commerce opportunities, customer care becomes very important for pre-paid customers. Broadly speaking, customers have several requirements from a customer care service perspective: information related to service available at the visiting network or territory location (e.g., can the customer send a fax using his/her mobile phone), information related to the local territory (e.g., who is the nearest doctor), information related to how to use the visiting network service (e.g., how the customer make a call to XYZ destination; how does the customer send a fax using his/her mobile phone which is supplied by a visiting network vendor), account inquiry services (e.g., what is the current balance in the customer's pre-paid account; what are the last five transactions the customer has done and how much did the transactions cost), account/service profile information modification services (e.g., the customer may want to change his/her address; the customer may want to subscribe to a new service so that he/she can send a fax), disputes/complaints (e.g., the customer had tried ten times and the call dropped every time and hence the customer does not want to pay for the call; the customer never made a call to XYZ destination), recharging of the customer's pre-paid account from various sources (e.g., the customer has run out of funds in his/her account, and he/she wants to top up using a recharge voucher, his/her bank account, cash or some other means).
The telephone company business is complex. Any teleco service delivery requires various systems to work in tandem to manage customer expectations, e.g., making service available, as well as providing complete and accurate information at the right place at the right time so that the customer is served efficiently. Telephone company systems also need to make sure that internal operations of the telephone company are optimized. That means complete and accurate information needs to be made available at the right time and the right place for the internal staff of the telephone company to use it to effectively manage business. Telephone company systems also need to make sure that they co-exist or are compatible with other third party telephone companies and service providers so that they can collectively offer service to the customers, and manage their business, share revenues, etc. To cater to such large and complex needs of telephone companies/service providers, there is no one single system that can offer the entire functionality. Typically, suppliers, integrators, and telephone companies work together to customize and integrate several different systems to cater to a particular telephone company's needs.
As the pre-paid communication service business was initially anticipated to be a separate service, telephone companies typically have adopted a single company-specific system that can control the calls in real time (or near real time with varied definitions of the phrase “real time”). As the pre-paid communications business has started to grow at a rapid pace worldwide, service providers feel a need to integrate their pre-paid systems with other systems so as to effectively serve their customers and manage business.
However, pre-paid roaming poses several challenges to the telephone company industry. All the participating networks need to have a common understanding of how to manage the call flow, how to offer services, and how to manage business. However, with several systems integrated in several manners across various networks there are quite a few challenges to pre-paid roaming. One fundamental issue is how to achieve a “seamless” service to the customer and effective business management across several participating networks, often heterogeneous or different types of networks. For example, one service provider operator may have an excellent customer care center whereas another operator may not have such a high quality customer care center, or one operator may have a high quality voucher generation/management system while the other operator is managing most of these processes manually. Simple or complex integration of several different systems together does not offer a business solution due to varied permutations and combinations for the telephone companies. Also, it is impractical to expect one or more of the telephone companies to abandon their existing systems and adopt an entirely new system no matter how qualitatively good the new system is.
Known pre-paid systems are single box solutions, which allow for limited integration with external systems. Even in a situation where it is feasible to integrate, it is not possible for other systems to enter into the pre-paid system at various levels. That is, integration to replace some of the functionality of the pre-paid system is not possible. Integration to add additional functionality is what needs to be achieved. This is a major limitation for the telephone companies to effectively manage their business. For example, if a telephone company already has a Personal Identification Number (PIN) generation system, if it would like to deploy a pre-paid system for roaming, it needs to use the PIN generation capability of the new pre-paid roaming system rather than the old system. That means, the telephone company now needs to have two separate PIN generation systems—one for non-roaming subscribers and another for roaming subscribers. This causes a lot of confusion in the marketplace and mere integration with a third party system will not solve the problem. There are other such problems, e.g., distribution management, customer administration, etc.
In addition to the foregoing, when mobile operators enable mobile commerce for a pre-paid roamer in a converged communications and commerce environment, there is a need for financial settlements to various parties involved in the commerce transaction made by the pre-paid roaming customer. Settlement of commerce transactions could additionally involve the following: payments related to commerce transactions may need to be distributed across one or more of the following entities: merchant (provider of goods/service either manufacturer, reseller or distributor or a combination of several such entities), portal (mobile portal or any other type of portal including a voice portal (“Vortal”), e-commerce portal, etc.), Internet service provider (an independent agency or mobile operator itself or portal itself), mobile phone company (home network, visiting network, or both), virtual service provider (either content service provider or infrastructure service provider or a branding agency or any combination), bank/credit card agency or any other financial institution (one or more involved in the transaction), third party payment agency (e.g., a merchant aggregator, payment processing agency, e-wallet, or any such payment processing agency), goods/service delivery agency (e.g., a courier company, bandwidth supplier, and insurance agency). It is also possible that mobile service providers may offer some bundled packages (e.g., if the customer buys $50 worth of goods while roaming, a roaming surcharge on telephony is waived, etc.). This means any settlement system should be capable of arriving at the various settlement amounts based on the tariff plans and roaming agreements between the various parties involved in the commerce transaction.
It is anticipated that mobile handling devices (phones, PDAs, etc.) will be used for all types of payments especially micro payments. Typically, a customer would use his mobile phone to pay for small value items, such as soft drinks at vending machines, cigarettes, newspapers, books, parking tolls, and other such low value payments which are generally known in the industry as the micro payments.
Existing technologies today allow for such payments to take place in one of the following ways: a customer can use his/her mobile phone and at the time of payment he/she can use his/her credit card or bank's debit card for payment. This means, payment would go thru the banking/credit account of the customer rather than the customer's telephony account. This method has limitations in that it assumes that all customers have either a bank debit card or a credit card. Present growth of pre-paid mobile telephony worldwide indicates that there is a big segment of the market that either does not have any banking/credit relationship or simply does not wish to use their banking/credit relationship for telephony. This is particularly true in certain developing countries with poor banking arrangements. Debit/Credit card assumption also limits the total number of customers who can conduct mobile commerce, and therefore the telephony company may only be playing a very limited role in mobile commerce. Telephone company revenues normally are restricted to the telephony connections and services they have provided. However, a customer could use his/her mobile telephony account for payment of a commercial transaction. That is, the cost of goods/services will be charged to the customer's telephony account. At the end of the month, the customer would get a teleco bill, which include the cost of the goods/services purchased. This method has limitations in that it assumes that the customer is a post-paid account customer. That means the system does not accommodate a pre-paid customer and thus cannot conduct a mobile commerce transaction. Instead, the system assumes that the payment risk is carried by the telephone company or by the merchant. At the end of the billing period, if the customer does not pay his/her bill, the telephone company/merchant has to absorb the financial risk.
Customers can have an e-wallet account, which is an account with a Personal Identification Number. Every time, the customer purchases goods, he or she can key in the PIN, and the e-wallet company (e.g., IPIN) can issue a payment guarantee. In this method, e-wallet works as a pre-paid account and only if the money balance is available in the account will a purchase transaction be authorized. This method has limitations because every time a purchase is requested, a user is required to identify him/herself (e.g., using a PIN, which is typically of 12 digits or more). This identification process itself can act as a deterrent and customers may not be interested going through the process for small value purchases. The telephony company again would only be playing a very limited role in the mobile commerce, as its revenues or charges are restricted to the telephony connection it has provided.
To simplify the mobile commerce purchase process, industry is seeking innovative technologies, such as Bluetooth, which allows for direct communication between vending machines and a customer's mobile phone. These technologies, however, also have limitations in that merchants as well as the customer need to be equipped with instruments that are capable of handling these technologies. This means higher set-up costs. Cost economics may not justify the investment at least in the earlier years, and these technologies do not address the issues related to payment risk. These systems assume that all the customers are trust worthy and will honor their payments. In real life, this is not the case. In addition, these technologies do not address the issues related to pre-paid customers. Pre-paid customers could be anonymous, which means neither the telephone company nor the merchant knows who the purchaser is.
In the electronic commerce world today, read/write memory devices are becoming more popular. Read/write memory devices have the capability to store an account balance, and other information related to the customer. Read/write memory devices do not need any network connection to the back-end systems. Read/write memory device readers can be deployed at the merchant's premises and a walk-in customer can use his card to make payments. This mechanism has been found to be useful as it is simple to use both for the merchant and customer, and allows for prepayment.
Every time a service is used, the payment related to that service is deducted from the customer's pre-paid account. It is clear that money in a pre-paid account will reach a zero balance at some point in time. Hence, there is a need by the customer to recharge his/her pre-paid account. There are several commercially available systems in the marketplace that offer pre-paid facilities and most of them offer account recharge. Currently available systems allow for account recharge: by issue of a recharge voucher (the voucher having a unique number, known as PIN, with a certain predetermined value, e.g., $20), which can be used by the customer. The customer dials into an Interactive Voice Response (“IVR”) System of the service provider and by way of a guided menu, the customer will be able to recharge his/her pre-paid account by punching in the unique PIN number.
Such a recharge system has limitations in that service providers need to print recharge vouchers and then distribute the vouchers. This is a big logistics and cost problem. Also, there is a potential fraud risk with several types of frauds feasible, for example, leakage of PINs to unauthorized users, unauthorized users randomly trying several numbers and matching the right number, and unauthorized parties printing fake recharge vouchers, like counterfeit currency. Moreover, service providers can offer only predetermined amounts of money per voucher. Although they may offer several types of vouchers, each voucher will have a predefined amount. This means that a customer cannot choose the exact amount of recharge he/she would like to do. Further, there is the inability of service providers to offer a credit facility to pre-paid customers. Increasing use of pre-paid accounts in the highly developed and credit-driven countries indicate that customers are increasingly using pre-paid accounts for convenience and easy use, rather than any credit related issues. Such customers do not like to pay upfront payments for services which they have not yet used. With a credit limit (with assurance of guaranteed payment by third parties like banks, etc.), such a method would increase the number of customers selecting pre-paid accounts.
In situations where a pre-paid amount is programmed onto a card that could be used by a customer (e.g., a SIM card, smart card, magnetic card or any other type of card), the customer can take his card to the nearest outlet where there are special programming machines available for recharging the card. These types of prepayments have been used in the past. However, as mobile commerce becomes increasingly popular, it is anticipated that customers would like to use such solutions for micro payments. Programming the pre-paid amount onto the cards offers convenience to the customer as he/she need not punch in a long (often 12 digits or more) code for a very low value transaction. However, such an account recharge arrangement has limitations in that customers can go to only a limited set of recharge outlets every time they need to recharge. Such cards cannot be recharged at other places. Service providers also do not like to update or recharge very large amounts to these cards due to issues related to fraud (e.g., unauthorized parties with access to equipment that can write large money amounts on the cards), and the inability of service providers to offer a credit facility to pre-paid customers.
In regular commerce transactions (e.g., using credit cards/debit cards at a physical store or shop), transaction validation is typically conducted by swiping the card and physical signature verification. Sometimes, as a protection from fraud, credit card/debit card agencies ask the merchant establishment/customer to call the bank. The bank then will use additional security measures like asking a mother's maiden name, date of birth, etc., to assure that the customer is not an unauthorized person. In the Internet and mobile Internet situations today, these additional security measures do not exist and fraud exists as noted above with various of the available no change pre-paid account systems. Due to limited security, fraud on internet/mobile Internet related transactions is estimated to be very high.